EnCompass News

EnCompass is honored to make two presentations at the InterAction workshop to discuss Local Ownership in Evaluation: Including Participants in Evaluation Decision Making. At this two-day workshop on March 9 and 10, M&E practitioners will explore the practical implications of adopting such an evaluation approach. As participatory evaluation is standard practice for EnCompass, we are delighted to have two presentations on the agenda.

Jonathan Jones, EnCompass Senior Evaluation Specialist will be part of a panel discussion offering a look at this approach through case studies, and EnCompass President, Tessie Catsambas, will present on “Promoting Rigor, Quality, and Local Ownership in Evaluation....

As the largest women’s empowerment program in USAID history , the “Promote” project aims at advancing opportunities for Afghan women to become political, private sector, and civil society leaders. EnCompass is honored to be part of the team of partners led by Chemonics International that includes Afghan and U.S.-based organizations.

Launched in Kabul in October, Promote is designed to help 75,000 young Afghan women become leaders over the course of the five-year program. USAID is providing $216 million to Promote, with other donors possibly contributing an additional $200 million. The program’s main goal is to strengthen Afghanistan’s development by boosting female participation in the economy, helping women gain...

EnCompass President, Tessie Catsambas, has been invited to join the Executive Advisory Board of the Council for International Development Companies (now a part of the International Development Task Force at the Professional Services Council). She joins a distinguished group of leaders in the international development field to provide guidance to this organization of nearly 120 company members. CIDC serves as an advocacy platform to pursue thought leadership and high-level dialogue with USAID, educate audiences on the vital role our companies play in sustainable development, and inform and advocate on contracting, regulatory, legislative, business process, and business development issues. EnCompass has been a member for the...

We are thrilled to announce that the EnCompass team was recently awarded one of USAID’s Advancing the Agenda of Gender Equality (ADVANTAGE) IDIQs, managed by the Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GenDev).

USAID’s Gender Equality and Female Empowerment policy (GEFE) calls for the integration of gender equality and women's empowerment throughout the Agency’s Program Cycle – strategic planning, programming, project design and implementation, and monitoring, evaluation and learning.

The ADVANTAGE IDIQ is designed to strengthen USAID's capacity to integrate GEFE by providing technical services related to gender, gender-based

We are pleased to announce that EnCompass, as part of a team led by JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. (JSI), has been awarded the Strengthening High Impact Interventions for an AIDS-Free Generation (AIDSFree) project, by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

In line with the PEPFAR Blueprint: Creating an AIDS-free Generation, the AIDSFree project aims to improve the effectiveness of high-impact, evidence-based HIV interventions, and accelerate the speed with which these interventions are brought to scale at country-level.

As part of the JSI team, we are poised to provide capacity development and technical support to USAID missions, host-country...

“Appreciative inquiry starts with the premise that something works, even if it’s the exception.”

The appreciative approach is central to much of our evaluation work here at EnCompass, and it was one of the themes upon which our President, Tessie Catsambas, presented at an evaluation workshop convened by the Institute of Medicine in January of this year.

The workshop focused on best practices in evaluating complex global initiatives, and brought together evaluators, researchers in the field of evaluation science, implementers of large-scale health programs, local stakeholders, policy makers, donor representatives, and others to derive lessons learned from past large-scale evaluations and to discuss how to apply these lessons to future evaluations.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) recently recognized EnCompass’ leadership and expertise in global health by awarding us two separate awards under the “Technical Assistance Support Contract Four, Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (TASC4 IDIQ)” contract mechanism. The purpose of the TASC4 IDIQs is to establish mechanisms to contribute to improvements in the health of people, especially women, children and other vulnerable populations in countries of the developing world, through expansion of basic health services, strengthening national health systems, and addressing global issues and special concerns such as HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases.

The first of these awards given to EnCompass is the TASC 4-Africa IDIQ. Historically, African Missions...